Habitat loss, introduced disease, and government-sponsored eradication programs have caused population declines in all 5 species of prairie dogs. Black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus) currently occupy only about 2% of an extensive geographic range (160 million hectares) and were recently considered for listing under the United States...

The Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program of the Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, is an annual monitoring system for the entire United States. Each year, an independent "panel" of FIA field plots is measured. To improve accuracy, FIA uses the "Moving Average" or "Temporally Indifferent" method to combine estimates from...

Extensive expanses of forest often change at a slow pace. In this common situation, FIA produces informative estimates of current status with the Moving Average (MA) method and post-stratification with a remotely sensed map of forest-nonforest cover. However, MA "smoothes out" estimates over time, which confounds analyses of temporal trends; and post-...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program maintains the National Information Management System (NIMS) that provides the computational framework for the annual forest inventory of the United States. Questions regarding the impact of key elements of programming logic, processing criteria, and estimation procedures...

An epidemic of lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) mortality from the mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) has swept across the Interior West. Aerial surveys monitor the areal extent of the epidemic, but only Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) field data support a detailed assessment at the tree level. Dynamics of the lodgepole pine population occur at a more...

Tree diameter growth models are widely used in many forestry applications, often to predict tree size at a future point in time. Also, there are instances where projections of past diameters are needed. An individual tree model has been developed to estimate diameter growth of multi-stem woodland tree species where the diameter is measured at root collar. The model was...

Rangeland landscapes occupy roughly 662 million acres in the coterminous U.S. (Reeves and Mitchell 2011) and their vegetation responds quickly to climate and management, with high relative growth rates and inter-annual variability. Current national decision support systems in the U.S. such as the Interagency Fuels Treatment Decision Support System (IFT-DSS) require...

Armillaria species range from beneficial saprobes to damaging root pathogens, and their ecological roles and impacts vary with environment and host. Armillaria solidipes [pending vote to conserve A. ostoyae . (Redhead et al. 2011 )] is known as an aggressive pathogen of conifers and causes tree mortality and significant growth loss in Wyoming and throughout...

Steppe, a mid-latitude, semiarid grassland has a wide global distribution. It is estimated that in the United States less than 23 percent of true shortgrass steppe still exists in native vegetation (National Grasslands Management Review Team Report, 1995). The Kiowa National Grassland long-term, 18-year, experimental fire research site is one such area. Located in the...

Bark beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) are mortality agents to multiple tree species throughout North America. Understanding spatiotemporal dynamics of these insects can assist management, prediction of outbreaks, and development of "real time" assessments of forest susceptibility incorporating insect population data. Here, dispersal of Douglas-...

The objective of this study was to model the influence of temperature and precipitation on the distribution and abundance of the ambrosia beetles in the genus Trypodendron. Although these beetles do not attack and kill healthy trees, their gallery holes and accompanying black and gray stain associated with symbiotic ambrosial fungi can cause significant economic losses...

The Southern Plains region contributes significantly to the Nation?s wheat and beef production. Winter wheat is the principal annual crop, with much of it serving dual-use as a cool-season annual forage in addition to grain production. Cattle are raised on extensive pasture and rangelands across the region. Agricultural production and farm income in the...

Black cherry (Prunus serotina) is the only native Prunus species (southeastern Canada and throughout the eastern United States) that is of high commercial value for timber and sawlog production. Black cherry wood is highly valued in North America for cabinets, furniture, fine veneer, and architectural woodwork. Hardwood lumber mills are constantly...

Disturbances are natural and essential components of healthy ecosystems, but their ecological roles in the maintenance of endemic conditions for an area (that is, long-established levels of activity that are of low magnitude and relatively static intensity and cause unnoticed or relatively low amounts of tree killing, defoliation, or deformation) are poorly understood...